Background
Caleb Heathcote was born on March 6, 1665, in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England. He was the son of Gilbert Heathcote, one-time mayor of Chesterfield, in the hundred of Scarsdale, Derbyshire, England, and Anne Dickens, his wife.
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Caleb Heathcote was born on March 6, 1665, in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England. He was the son of Gilbert Heathcote, one-time mayor of Chesterfield, in the hundred of Scarsdale, Derbyshire, England, and Anne Dickens, his wife.
Caleb Heathcote removed in 1692 to New York, where he was almost immediately appointed to the governor’s council. This Position he held, except for the years 1698-1702, until his death. He prospered as a merchant, a contractor, and a farmer of Westchester County taxes, but was conspicuously free from the scandals then prevalent in public life. Beginning in 1692, he served for life as colonel of militia, presiding judge of the court of sessions, judge of the prerogative court, and (after 1693) first judge of the court of common pleas, all for Westchester County. Near here he erected gristmills, a leather-mill, a fulling-mill, a linseed-oil mill, and a sawmill. Living in an atmosphere of land speculation, he associated eight others with him and in 1697 patented the “Great Nine Partners” tract in Outchess County; similarly he patented three Westchester tracts running from near Croton Point to Connecticut. Partnerships he found necessary from political, not financial, considerations.
Heathcote owned land also in Ulster and Richmond counties and in New York City. Purchased from Ann Richbell about twenty square miles cunning back from Mamaroneck, he had it and two small adjoining tracts erected into the Manor of Scarsdale (1701) with customary rights, the act manor granted in the British Empire. He forewent his manorial courts, being county judge himself. In 1695 and again during 1702-1703 he was a commissioner to conduct the offices of collector and receiver general.
He unfolded schemes to the British government for the production of naval stores with the aid of garrison soldiers, calling attention to his own success with flax and hemp. The ministry passed over his apparently practicable proposals, however, preferring to experiment futilely, it proved with New Englanders and, later, German immigrants. He made an early suggestion (1715) of a general conference of colonial administrators to discuss defense and Indian relations, without success. Rejecting his plans but respecting his capacity, the ministry in 1715 made him surveyor-general of the customs for the northern department, that is, to the Delaware River. To free imperial administration of obstructive assemblies, he proposed in 1716 that Parliament provide increased customs revenue and pay governors and other officials out of it. Finding Connecticut smoothly insolent to customs officers and Rhode Island uproariously defiant, he urged in 1719 that these charter governments be strictly reformed. The High Admiralty Court of England made him judge of vice-admiralty of New York, Connecticut, and the Jerseys (1715).
Meanwhile in Westchester Heathcote had threatened his militia with hard Sunday drill unless they maintained regular worship, and had begun the establishment of his church. Cleverly circumventing the local New England majority, he set up Episcopal worship in Westchester, Rye, New Rochelle, Eastchester, and Yonkers. He steadily supported the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, of which he became a member. After careful plans, he made in 1706 the first of five missionary journeys into Connecticut and was chiefly responsible for planting Episcopacy in that colony at Stratford. His death from apoplexy in 1721 came, appropriately enough, when he was collecting funds for a charity.
Caleb Heathcote married Martha, daughter of “Tangier” Smith on September 7, 1699. They had six children, four of which died young.